Risk assessment

Today I saw someone update their feed with "Stuck in traffic [...]". I'm hoping that a passenger sent the message, but it is likely that the driver, while stuck, decided an update wouldn't hurt. Oddly, in the same feed is a message "[...] school bus w/o seat belts [...] Should I just drive her & pick her up?". For some reason there are people that think that buses (even without seat belts) are less safe than cars, and that sending updates from cars while driving doesn't increase risk. Here are some statistics:

Number of deaths per billion based on one hour of risk exposure (from the book 'Dangerous Places'):
Rail or bus in the United States: 10
Traveling by car: 1200

Increase of crash risk due to sending a text message from a car: 23x.

Mosha down: visitors

Mosha is in the guest bed room, and the visitors complained about the noise, so I had to turn the server off. I should be back in at most two weeks. My apologies for the inconvenience.

Mosha temporarily down

Mosha will be brought down for the Holidays, because I am too busy having fun to keep managing the server. I will be monitoring this post for comments, and my apologies for the inconvenience. It should be up after the first week of January again.

Nanowrimo winner

I finished my novel just in time to make the deadline for the NaNoWriMo 2009. Here is my award. Of course, it will need considerable editing before anyone else gets to read it, but if you want to help edit I might be able to send you a copy. I will expect pretty serious feedback in that case, though.

Pre Technics LEGO gears

Before LEGO came with the "LEGO Technics" (of which many parts are used in LEGO Mindstorms) they experimented with different gear systems. Displayed is the one I used in Europe (I understood that a different version was released in the USA). The gears can be combined at a 90 degree angle as well. The gears have 21, 15 and 9 pins, allowing gear ratios of 7:5, 7:3 and 5:3.

Even though the axles are white, they are still compatible with Technics. Similarly the bricks, wheels and stop bush are all still usable, although they have different colours. Not all the stop bush have the same shape: some are intended to be stops, others are intended to be used with rubber bands. The metal pins are used to connect the system to the 4.5V and 12V motors that existed at the time. The threads allow attachment of regular LEGO parts, unfortunately most of the pieces of the thread got lost.

Museum expanded

After getting some feedback from a co-worker I decided to reduce the amount of rust slightly, and add more hints that it is a museum setting. I also made the floor less distracting by adding a plate, which would also ensure that the marble wouldn't be damaged by the engine itself.

Steampunk time continuation

I think this version makes my idea much clearer, and probably needs less explanation, which is good.